Ragnaroctopus!
by robert.smith.9400984
Summary: When Jump City is threatened by space-time disturbances, the Teen Titans need some specialist advice... A tribute to two of my favourite shows of all.
1. Five children and Who

"Anything to report?"

Cyborg turned from the monitor as Robin stalked into the control room. His hunched shoulders spoke of a greater strain than usual. Starfire flew in after him, her brimming emerald eyes speaking eloquent volumes of concern.

"Nothing new," Cyborg replied. "We don't have enough to go on yet."

"Those dimensional disturbances must be following some sort of pattern. They must have a source, and we need to find it."

"The computers can't detect one," Cyborg told him for about the fifth time. "Take it easy. All we can do is wait."

Robin turned to where Raven was sitting in the lotus position on the sofa, her eyes closed as she attuned her spirit to wavelengths beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.

"Raven, anything?"

"Nothing new," she said impassively. "In fact there's still nothing to say these disturbances aren't just natural phenomena."

"That coincidentally started just after a spate of high-technology thefts? No, the phenomena are being created by somebody for a reason, and we have to find out what it is. But to do that, we have to trace them."

"We've got the whole city under constant scan for space-time disturbances," Cyborg reassured him. "As soon as anything happens, we'll know."

The doors whizzed open and Beast Boy shambled through them, yawning.

"Morning. What's new?"

"Nothing," said Robin through gritted teeth. "And it's twelve oh eight PM – that's afternoon, Beast Boy."

"Hey, don't bite my head off," said Beast Boy, sinking his fangs into a tofu stick. "I don't know what you're so worried about. Space, time, dimensions, blah, blah... it'll sort itself out. There's no need to get antsy."

"Well, forgive me for being a little 'antsy' about something which could potentially destroy the whole of reality, never mind this planet!"

"Oh... try to have calmness and the peace of mind, Robin," said Starfire, wringing her hands in discomfort at his mood. "Something will happen soon, you will see."

Right on cue, the red alert went off. Cyborg sprang to the console.

"The scanners are going crazy!" he shouted. "What just happened?"

"Trouble!" Robin snarled, glaring at the monitor.

A large blue box had just appeared out of thin air on the junction of Fifth and Lombard.

# # # #

A mad dash across town brought the Titans on the scene within minutes, although by then the crowd of bystanders drawn by the box's strange apparition had already lost interest and moved on (Jump City's citizens were used to seeing stranger things than this on a weekly basis). The box was fairly ordinary-looking: an upright blue cabinet with a light on top and "Police Public Call Box" written on it, whatever that meant. But, more interestingly, a man and a woman had just emerged from it.

Robin swiftly evaluated the strangers. The man was wearing a long brown coat and multi-coloured scarf, and fiddling with a piece of machinery – possibly some sort of fiendish doomsday device – while the pale blonde woman, who was eccentrically clad in a pink tweed three-piece suit with a white rose in the buttonhole, was peering around curiously.

"Stop right there!" Robin shouted, unable to think of a witty quip because he didn't actually know anything about the two strangers or what they were planning. They ignored him totally. This was quite an uncommon experience for Robin; super-villains usually sat up and paid attention at this point...

"Universal transponder's still not registering anything," the Doctor was saying irritably. "Must be on the blink."

"Either that or we've landed in a different reality altogether," replied Romana.

"What?"

"Well, look around you. Do you notice anything… unusual?"

The Doctor looked around. They were standing in a brightly-coloured drawing of a busy city street, possibly representing a metropolis on the west coast of America. Nearby, five dramatically-rendered drawings of young people were adopting combat positions and staring at them in a hostile manner.

He grunted, and resumed fiddling with the transponder.

"So?" Romana insisted. "What do you think?"

"Well…" he shrugged, "As cartoon worlds go it's rather two-dimensional, wouldn't you say? A bit lacking when you're used to having all four."

"Doctor!" Romana hissed in a stage whisper. "It's not their fault these people are two-dimensional. Do try to be a little more sensitive!"

"Hmm?"

"Drawings have feelings too, you know!" Romana muttered urgently in his ear.

"What are they talking about?" wondered Cyborg, as the Titans looked at each other in puzzlement. The others could only shrug.

"There is something kind of funny about them," said Beast Boy, rubbing his head as if trying to make his brain work. "I just can't get my head around it."

"Yeah… as though there's more to them than it appears," said Robin, narrowing his eyes.

"Come along, K-9," called the Doctor, "it seems safe enough for you out here: no stairs, peat bogs, swamps, shingle beaches, lava flows or unrestricted speed zones."

As the assembled Titans gawked, a strangely-shaped metal box came grinding out of the blue cabinet on caterpillar tracks.

"_What_ is that?" Raven asked in a coldly disbelieving tone of voice.

"Now I've seen everything," laughed Cyborg.

"Sweet, a robot dog!" yelped Beast Boy, and turned into a green approximation of the newcomer.

"Spatial anomaly detected, Master," said the robot dog in a squeaky voice, ignoring Beast Boy, who was sniffing around his rear antenna in a friendly manner. "Less than the requisite number of dimensions registered."

"Don't be rude, K-9, we've landed in a different reality altogether! You don't go into someone else's house and criticise the spatial dimensions of their carpets, do you?"

"Dimensional aesthetics of carpets not among my critical functions, Master."

"Of course you don't." Turning to the Titans, the Doctor gave them a wave and a beaming, toothy smile. "Hello there! I'm the Doctor, and this is Romana. I don't suppose any of you have a universal transponder we could borrow?"

# # # #

A short while later, after some brief introductions had been made, it was obvious the strangers weren't doing any harm just yet, but Robin still felt like keeping a close eye on them. Besides, if they really were from another universe, it was the Teen Titans' duty to show them some hospitality after their long journey. Thus they had all ended up back at the tower. The Doctor and Romana had spent much of the journey squabbling in the back of the T-car.

"I still think it was a silly idea to drop out of our own reality just to escape from the Black Guardian," Romana had been saying. "It's taking us simply ages to get back."

"Don't let's go over all that again," the Doctor had replied.

"But –"

"Sh-sh-sh!" The Doctor's shushing was an explosive sound, not unlike a firework making a rather juddery take-off.

"What is it, Doctor?!"

"Sorry, I thought I heard the stirring of eldritch energies from the dawn of time, or thereabouts. Did that sound like eldritch stirring to you?"

"I didn't hear anything, Doctor. You're changing the subject!"

"Hmm." The Doctor pulled a face. "Must've been my imagination."

Robin wasn't sure what to make of that conversation, but he certainly had a few questions he wanted to put to the Doctor. As soon as they got in the front door, however, the Doctor had plonked himself down at the main computer console and started reading their files.

"Do you mind?!" exclaimed Robin with a certain amount of agitation. "Those are top secret! You shouldn't even be able to get into them."

"I do beg your pardon," the Doctor replied affably, "I'm being a frightfully bad houseguest. Ah!"

"What?"

"I see this area has been suffering from temporal fibrillations recently."

"Yes..."

"Temporal fibrillations that started right after a series of thefts from high-tech laboratories in the same city. Rather a coincidence, wouldn't you say?"

"No, I wouldn't," said Robin. "We think the two things are connected."

"I think you might be right. So what have you done about it?"

"Nothing, yet: the computer hasn't been able to trace the source of the disturbances."

"Your computer might not be able to, but I dare say we can," said the Doctor, turning back to the monitor. "Download and analyse this data, K-9."

"Affirmative, Master."

The robot dog rolled up to the computer console, and a red plastic disc extended out from his head on a telescopic stalk and connected to the circuitry. Streams of code began flickering on the monitor as it was transferred.

"Yo, dawg!" exclaimed Cyborg, "What are you doing to my mainframe?"

"It's alright, really," Romana reassured the Teen Titans with a bright smile, "we run into this sort of thing all the time. This is our department."

"About that," said Robin. "You still haven't explained who you really are or what you're doing here."

"We're really the Doctor, Romana and K-9," said Romana. "We told you. As for what we're doing here, well – we usually just turn up in places. And when we get there we usually end up helping people. Would you like some help?"

"Umm..." said Robin.

"Yes," chorused the others.

"Splendid!" said the Doctor. "Now, while K-9's digesting that little lot, why don't you fill us in a bit, hmm?"

"It started a few days ago," Cyborg told him. "We only found out that the robberies had happened afterwards, thanks to a tip-off. The targets were the three biggest firms in town, and they all wanted to keep it under wraps. S.T.A.R. Labs, Wayne Enterprises, LexCorp have all been hit. We're talking serious high-end technology: some of it's so cutting-edge, even the people who built it don't know what it's for, but it mainly came from the quantum physics and dimensional research side of things. We've told the other tech firms in town to step up their security, but whoever did it has probably got what they need already."

"And the first fibrillations in the space-time continuum were picked up yesterday?"

"That's right. We've had three so far. And I'm not sure exactly what scale you measure it on, but they seem to be getting bigger."

"So I saw. It looks as though some idiot is trying to build a dimension-slicer, something that can cut a hole in the fabric of space-time to another universe. He's thrown one together in a couple of days out of stolen bits and bobs, and judging from these readings he must be trying to get it to full power without bothering to synchronise the positron loop wavelength with the output."

"Dangerous," commented Romana.

"Very – and not only to him. But why? What's it all in aid of?"

"We're not sure," said Robin, "but Raven has a suspicion."

"The night before last I had a vision of disaster," Raven said. "Or possibly a premonition, I'm not sure. I'm a sorceress, you see..."

"A sorceress?" repeated Romana with an unmistakeable note of scepticism.

"Yes, a sorceress, Romana – they do exist, you know," said the Doctor, staring at Raven with some intensity. He leapt up from the chair and crossed the room in a few loping strides. "A vision, how interesting. Would you mind showing me?"

"How?" said Raven, looking up at him a little nervously as he towered over her.

"Just relax." Firmly, but gently, he cupped her face in his hands, and her cool purple eyes met his of wild blue. There was a breathless pause for a second, then: "contact," said the Doctor.

"Contact," Raven found herself replying.

Although to those watching nothing outwardly seemed to happen, there passed between them a sudden, fundamental understanding which Raven had never felt before. She felt she could easily be absorbed by it altogether, and all her secrets known; but it limited itself to what was uppermost in her mind, bringing back into full light the vision of horror and despair, of a hideous clawed and tentacled thing with one obscenely huge squidlike eye that stared down madly at a tiny world – tiny, yet crammed with souls in agony – which shuddered and came apart in the face of its bestial hunger.

The Doctor's mind withdrew, and as she came back to herself she needed a second to control her emotions.

"Well, Doctor?" said Romana.

"See for yourself."

The Doctor lightly touched Romana's face with his fingers. She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again as he withdrew his hand.

"What do you think, Romana?"

"Very nasty. And rather familiar."

"That's what I thought, too."

"I've been trying to work out what the vision was showing me," said Raven. "And I can only think of one possibility: a legendary monster known as the Ragnaroctopus. But it seems so unlikely that I can't be sure I'm right."

"Tell us about it anyway," said the Doctor encouragingly, draping a friendly arm around her shoulders, and getting away with it through the sheer force of his personality.

"Out of all the ancient magical texts, there is only one that speaks of it," said Raven. "The Romanomicon of Caecilius Hortus Quaestor, which is known to us only through Al-Hazred's Arabic translation. Quaestor journeyed all around the known world searching for occult secrets. According to him, the legends of primitive tribes in the far north spoke of an octopus larger than the world, which could be summoned by a mystic charm fashioned from the sap of trees from the Indes which had been hardened in a furnace for seven days and nights. They referred to it as the Ragnaroctopus. The tribesmen thought that if the creature was summoned, the world would end."

"Sap from the trees of the Indes, hardened in a furnace," repeated the Doctor, nodding. "Of course: vulcanised rubber, a primitive form of plastic. That confirms it."

"Surely not, Doctor?" said Romana.

"I'm afraid so."

"But that means –"

"Yes. The Ragnaroctopus is none other than the Nestene Consciousness, in the form in which it has passed into the legends of this world."

"Then we're in a lot of trouble," said Romana with a shiver.

"Explain," Robin ordered them.

"We're dealing with a being we've encountered before, one that exists on a different plane of reality, the one the Doctor and I are from," said Romana. "You're familiar with the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, which holds that at each unit of Planck time, decoherence occurs, and every possible eigenstate in each quantum superposition is actualised, each existing in a separate branch of reality – a parallel universe?"

Four out of the five Teen Titans nodded intelligently, while the fifth tried to stop his brain from dribbling out of his ears.

"Right, well, you'll have to abandon those simplistic preconceptions," continued Romana briskly. "It's far more complicated than that, so listen very carefully: the Doctor and I don't come from a universe parallel to this one; we come from one that's sort of above it." She waggled her hand above her head in order to give them a visual representation of a universe that existed sort of above another one.

"Yes. Your universe is, err... a sub-creation, generated by a systematic process of sustained mutual intellection on a higher-dimensional plane," said the Doctor, trying to avoid using the word 'fictional'. "A sort of offshoot from the prime reality."

"I knew it!" Beast Boy groaned, rubbing his head with a grimace. "Parallel universes, prime realities... I knew all this timey-wimey stuff would give me a headache."

"_Timey-wimey_?" growled the Doctor. But before he could remonstrate, they were interrupted by a high-pitched squeak from the other side of the room.

"Master! Mistress! Alert! Under attack from hostile lifeform!"

They looked round. K-9, his ears waggling in panic, was doing doughnuts around the floor trying to shake off Silkie, whose jaws were clamped round his tail. Starfire flew to the rescue, pulling the slavering mutant larva off his prey.

"Bad Silkie!" she chided. "Metallic canine creatures are not for eating!"

"Say thank you, K-9," said the Doctor, grinning at the spectacle.

"Gratitude sincerely offered," said an audibly relieved K-9. Starfire curtsied politely to him in mid-air.

"Sorry to be serious again for a second," drawled Raven, "but this 'Ragnaroctopus' – it's bad news, right?"

The Doctor's grin vanished. He thrust his hands into his pockets and stared moodily into space.

"Very. The Nestene Consciousness is one of the Great Old Ones, beings of awesome power which came into existence in the primal vortex soon after the moment of Creation. In our own reality its powers in the physical world are limited to the control of certain substances, such as polymers. But at this level of reality, its powers will be greatly enhanced. If our enemy, whoever he may be, succeeds in summoning it, the Ragnaroctopus will be capable of consuming your entire planet without a second thought."

"Then we have to stop it from being summoned!" exclaimed Robin, punching his fist into his other hand. "How long do we have?"

"Mars and Saturn are moving into close conjunction over the next few nights," put in Raven. "To the ancients, the two most ill-omened stars. And Sunday is June 6 of the year 2004."

"Is that relevant?" frowned Romana.

"The sixth day of the sixth month of a year whose digits add up to six. The number 666 is considered to have evil significance in the occult symbolism of this planet, Romana," the Doctor explained. "It's all very trite and obvious, but it adds up to one conclusion: we don't have long."

The solemnity of the moment was interrupted by another high-pitched shriek. They all looked round again. It wasn't K-9 this time: Starfire's eyes had gone white and round with terror, and a single enormous bead of sweat dripped into existence next to her head ("hmm, anime stylings," Romana noted). She was staring at where two sinister green tentacles were coiling down from the ceiling and creeping around Raven's shoulders! Raven rolled her eyes.

"Beast Boy…" she sighed.

In a sudden explosion of tentacles, an enormous green octopus dropped onto her head with a squelch.

"Raaah! I am the Ragnaroctopus! The universe will be mine! And I particularly like eating Ravens!" it roared, in Beast Boy's attempt at a deep, booming voice.

"Amazing," muttered Raven as a blast of dark energy shot him across the room. "Eight arms, but not a single brain cell."

"There's a time and a place, Beast Boy," frowned Robin.

"Well said, that man!" commented the Doctor. "There is indeed. How are you getting on, K-9?"

"Analysis complete, Master. Source of space-time disturbances located. Projecting results onto monitor."

"Good dog, K-9, good dog!"

"It's an underground bunker in the old scientific research complex, just outside the city limits," said Cyborg. "Recently disused."

"Looks like someone's found another use for it," said Robin. "We have to get there right away."

But even as he spoke, the red alert began flashing again.

"It's the Kronodyne Laboratories building," announced Cyborg, quickly scanning the readouts. "Robbery in progress."

"That's the other side of town – the only major tech lab in the city which hasn't already been hit," Robin noted.

"We should respond," urged Starfire. "People may be in danger."

"I agree," said Raven. "This may be our last chance to stop them. There can't be much else they need to steal."

"Er, excuse me." The Doctor cleared his throat apologetically. "We need to find the equipment which is causing the time disturbances right away. A primitive lash-up like that could destroy this planet by itself, quite apart from any eldritch abominations it might summon. Neutralising it has to be our priority."

"All three of you are right," said Robin. "We'll have to divide our forces. Star, you and Raven deal with the robbery – Cyborg, Beast Boy and I will handle the research complex. Titans, go!"

"You'd better go with them to the Kronodyne labs, Romana," said the Doctor. "I want to get to that bunker."

"Right, Doctor."

The Doctor crouched down next to K-9, putting one finger to his own lips and another against the dog's snout in order to forestall any complaints.

"K-9, you'll have to stay here and hold the fort – speed is of the essence. Sh-sh, don't argue! And play nicely with Silkie."

"Affirmative, Master."

"Well, come on, everybody!" the Doctor shouted, leaping back to his feet in a multi-coloured blur of decisive motion.

Pausing only to notice that everyone, including Romana, had already gone, he swept from the room.


	2. Chapter 2: Enough Talk, Time For Action

A strong wind was blowing Romana's hair all over her face so fast that she was hardly able to brush it off again, and she was having difficulty maintaining her icy-cool poise – especially considering she was standing on a thin black disc of magical energy several hundred feet above the city's tarmac streets, hurtling through the air at great speed under the direction of a morose teenage witch. Romana was pretty open to new experiences, but there were several things she wasn't entirely comfortable with about this one.

Just after she, Starfire and Raven had departed on their mission, she had seen the Doctor and the others zooming off in the T-Car, the Doctor obviously having a whale of a time, leaning out of the passenger window with his hat clasped to his head for dear life and his scarf streaming out for several metres behind. A much more civilised way to travel, Romana thought enviously; and she wasn't usually a fan of ground cars.

They soon landed in the secure courtyard of the Kronodyne Laboratories complex. A huge hole had been blasted in the wall of the main building. Romana, Raven and Starfire entered through it into the network of corridors and workshops inside. The place seemed deserted; presumably all the staff had fled.

"We may have arrived too late to apprehend the thieves," said Starfire, "I fear they may already have absconded with what they came for."

"Oh well, you rarely catch a tafelshrew on Otherstide, as they say," said Romana philosophically, giving the quotation in the original Standard Gallifreyan.

"What did you say?" asked Starfire, looking at her in puzzlement.

"Oh, nothing. Just an old joke in the language of my world. I doubt you would've got it," smiled Romana – whereat Starfire's eyes narrowed a little.

Romana prided herself that her aristocratic hauteur, the ice-cool composure which she had learned in the very best Time Lord finishing schools, never failed in even the most lethal and mind-boggling circumstances. But it nearly deserted her when, without the slightest warning, Starfire landed in front of her, grabbed her, and gave her a long, firm kiss on the lips.

"She does that," Raven commented dryly, remembering the time she had been absorbed in a mystical text and accidentally said good morning to Starfire in Sanskrit.

Romana's self-possession was hanging by a thread as she disentangled herself from Starfire's embrace.

"Starfire," she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear nervously, "I think we should get something clear. Of course I'm very flattered – you're a beautiful girl, probably – but there is the difference in our ages to be considered – I'm nearly a hundred and fifty, whereas you're about fifteen or so..."

"You misunderstand! The reason why we touched faces was so that I could comprehend the joke that you made," said Starfire in fluent Standard Gallifreyan. "But you were right: I do not get it," she added.

"It was funny because it actually is Otherstide today, relatively speaking; but I don't understand what kissing me has got to do with... hang on, what language were you just speaking?"

"It was not a kiss; it was a genetic transfer, through which I was able to learn your language."

"I'm sorry, Starfire, but that's preposterous!" snapped Romana, fed up with the way this reality kept thrusting Clarke's Law so rudely into her face (literally, in this instance). But Starfire just giggled and flew away.

"Come on," said Raven, "let's search this place."

# # # #

Across town, in the bunker outside the city limits, the other Teen Titans were grappling with a problem that the Doctor had become all too familiar with in seven hundred years of adventuring.

"How are we supposed to find the secret bad-guy hideout in this place?" demanded Beast Boy. "These corridors all look the same! We might be going round in circles and we wouldn't know it. And it's dark!"

"I'm reading energy field activity, but nothing I can home in on," Cyborg said, looking at his personal sensors. "The machinery could be shielded. In a place like this, I wouldn't be surprised if the shielding's built in."

"Ahm nt hffing mch lk eever," said the Doctor, who was juggling an etheric beam locator and a neutrino tube, so had transferred the sonic screwdriver to between his teeth.

"We'll have to split up," decided Robin. "Go separate ways, and if any of you finds the source of the disturbances, contact the others. Doctor, just temporarily, here's a spare communicator: you can reach any of us on it."

"Fank oo."

So they went off four separate ways. The Doctor selected a corridor and strode down it, stuffing scientific implements back into his pockets as he went. After several twists and turns he became aware that the air was starting to get colder. Walking a little more cautiously, he continued. Soon, in the near-darkness of the bunker, his keen eyes detected a glow that pulsed with the regularity of a heartbeat. It was emanating from somewhere up ahead. He proceeded down the corridor, following the pulsating lights, aware as he did so that the light which was leading him could be a deliberate lure into something very nasty.

"Come into my garden, said the octopus to the fly..." the Doctor mused. But there was no help for it: whatever was going on here had to be stopped, and that meant finding it... even if it wanted to be found.

The light grew brighter and brighter, until the Doctor reached an open door. It led to some kind of workshop, from which a humming and a bleeping emanated. He peeked round the frame of the door. There was no-one in sight, but the room was full of promising-looking machinery.

"Ah-ha. The octopus's garden."

Tucking his scarf back over his shoulder, the Doctor sidled cautiously into the workshop, keeping an eye out for eldritch tentacles (or other more prosaic perils), and giving the machinery the once-over as he did so.

In the centre of the room stood a large array of twisted metal tubing, underneath which was a box full of wires and blinking flashing lights: the source of the glow that had led him here. Up close, there was something strangely disturbing about the lights, and the weird pattern of their flashing had a faintly nightmarish quality. The Doctor recognised the characteristic sensory and emotional disturbance, and unmistakable psychic signature, associated with primal-vortex energies. He started to move towards the array for a closer look, but was brought up short by a cultured, sneering voice from behind him.

"Take a good look, my friend – it will undoubtedly be your last!"

# # # #

Romana, Starfire and Raven did the sensible thing and decided not to split up. Together they made their way through a lot of also-quite-samey corridors, moving deeper and deeper underground as they continued into the complex, encountering no-one at all. But eventually they came out onto a balcony overlooking a large vault, the floor of which thronged with activity. They quickly ducked behind cover to avoid being seen by those below.

They peeked carefully over the balcony wall down into the vault. It was full of masked figures, wearing all-over metallic light armour in a style reminiscent of ninjas. They were gathered in front of an interior door which obviously led to a further, more secure vault. Two of them were operating a machine covered with aerials pointing at the selfsame door.

"We were not too late after all," breathed Starfire. "We have arrived just in time."

"Whatever's in that vault is obviously what they're after," whispered Romana. "We need to get in there first. We'll have to distract them somehow, draw them off."

"There's no time for that," said Raven. "We'll just have to go through them."

"But there are about twenty of them, and only three of us!"

"Correction: two of us," said Raven. "You stay here. This is our department."

"Um, are you quite sure about this? They're quite big... and that looks like power-armoured battledress."

Raven took off, swiftly followed by Starfire. Immediately the sound of gunshots, energy blasts and things crashing into other things filled the vault. Romana covered her eyes in despair.

"I can't watch," she lamented.

Even with her hands over her eyes, she could see green and (somehow) black lights flashing violently. Unable to resist, she peeked through her spread fingers. About ten of the ninjas were strewn around the floor, unconscious. Most of the rest were firing laser pistols into the air, trying and failing to hit the coruscating green flare that was zooming around above their heads hurling starbolts. The others were shooting ineffectively at a black shell of energy, which, as Romana watched, suddenly flew out at them in a wall, sending them all flying like skittles at a bowling alley. As the shell of black energy dissipated, Raven stood revealed inside. Her eyes met Romana's.

"Almost done," she said.

Romana grinned weakly and gave her a half-hearted wave.

As the fight continued, Romana saw a path clear through to the inner door. She made a break for it, picking her way through the debris and bodies. About halfway across, one of the masked ninjas suddenly landed in front of her, and she skidded to a halt. The ninja's eyes narrowed, and he thrust his laser pistol into Romana's face.

"I surrender!" Romana shouted, putting her hands up really high. The ninja paused, confused. A split second later, a large piece of metal swathed in dark energy crashed into him from the side and knocked him sprawling.

Romana looked sideways. Raven was standing there, the glow of power fading from her eyes. Starfire landed next to her with a style and grace that would have won full marks in any gymnastics floor exercise. They were both totally unruffled. Behind them, piles of unconscious enemy warriors could be glimpsed through the drifting smoke.

"Nice going," said Raven. "Pretending to surrender like that kept him busy long enough for me to come and finish him off."

"Yes, indeed – ahem," coughed Romana, who was now feeling slightly ruffled herself. "Thank you. Well done."

"Don't mention it," said Raven. "Now let's get into that vault."

"Leave it to me!" said Romana stoutly. She brought her sonic screwdriver to bear on the locking mechanism, and after a few seconds, the thick blast door creaked open.

"I could have opened that for you in half the time with magic," said Raven.

"Would it not have been simpler for me to tear the door off its hinges?" enquired Starfire with a puzzled frown.

Romana closed her eyes and counted to ten million very quickly.

"Yes. Either of those would have been quicker," she agreed.

Then, just to make the day even more frustrating, the booby-traps exploded.

# # # #

The voice came from a rather short man who was clad from head to foot in metallic armour, complete with a mask that was dramatically coloured to give the illusion that half his face was permanently in shadow. He was standing on a gantry overlooking the room with his hands behind his back, gazing down arrogantly at the Doctor. About a dozen similarly masked and armoured henchmen wielding laser pistols stood at his heels, awaiting his order to kill. The Doctor gazed arrogantly right back up at him.

"Ah," he said, "you must be the chap who's nursing an unhealthy obsession with giant celestial octopuses... or should I say octopi? Octopodes?" He thought for a second. "No, octopuses."

"Octopus," corrected the masked villain. "Singular. The Ragnaroctopus, to be precise. Summoning that glorious creature will be the greatest act of magick ever performed in the history of sentient life."

"I quite agree. Makes it rather a shame that there'll be no-one left alive to celebrate it with occasional verses, half-holidays, Ragnaroctopus Day parades, and all that sort of thing, doesn't it?" said the Doctor, thinking that just for once it might be worthwhile pointing out the obvious flaw in the villain's plan.

But, as he had suspected would happen, his interlocutor ignored him.

"I must admit," he continued, looking the Doctor up and down, "when the intruder alert went off, I was expecting a team of daring young superheroes, not a down-at-heel sideshow clown... but no matter. Whoever you are, you signed your own death warrant when you stumbled across my project. Destroy him, my minions!"

As the heavily-armed thugs advanced menacingly on him, the Doctor could barely suppress a grin of excitement. _Crumbs_, he thought, _perhaps I've really had it this time!_

It was exactly the same type of situation he got himself into every week – roughly every twenty to twenty-five minutes, in fact. Yet somehow, it never got any less thrilling...

TO BE CONTINUED...


End file.
